The Nintendo Switch Online App Is As Terrible In Practice As It Was In Theory

With the launch of Splatoon 2 also comes the release of Nintendo’s long-awaited online service app, which uses your phone to set up voice chat and party play for Nintendo’s online offerings.

The initial reaction when Nintendo announced that their online service would be run through a phone app was confusion, and it turns out that what seemed like a bad idea is…actually a pretty bad idea, at least with how the app currently functions.

It turns out many of the things people were concerned about regarding running online through an app are the exact problems the app is launching with:

The functionality is pretty barebones at this point. Splatoon 2 only lets you take part in private battles with friends right now, making the entire process barely worth it at all.

You can only talk to players when you're in the waiting room of a game or the game itself, and nowhere else, despite the service running through your phone.

Unlike almost any other chat app, if you swipe out of the app and back to your home screen or open a different app, you will lose the ability to voice chat.

Not only does your Nintendo app have to stay open for voice chat to work, but your screen has to stay on, making this a substantial battery drain on your phone.

In handheld mode with headphones this will require a bunch of cables and probably the kind of convoluted splitter we’ve seen from third party manufacturers already. I still don't know if you will be able to get game audio and voice audio at the same time even while using one of these.

The Switch Audio ContraptionHORI

And above all else, I cannot fathom why any of this is at all better than the native voice chat and party making that Xbox, PlayStation and PC have enjoyed for well over a decade at this point. Nintendo’s excuse for this phone app was that it was somehow “better” than the alternative, but now it just seems like Nintendo for some reason had to do this because of some sort of shortcoming with their network or the Switch itself. It’s impossible to understand why you would set up your online service this way unless you were absolutely forced to.

Nintendo has never exactly been at the forefront of online gaming, but in 2017, it’s still stunning that this is genuinely their plan for an online service, and that it's designed this poorly. Sure, many Nintendo games won’t require online, but this is yet another thing preventing them from making deals with third party developers as it’s difficult to imagine trying to party up for Call of Duty or Battlefront games using this horribly convoluted system. And remember that Nintendo is finally starting to charge for its online offerings, and even though it’s cheap, the fact that it's no longer free implies some measure of improved quality, and at this point, this phone idea sure isn’t it.

Granted we are at essentially day zero of this service being operational and the “full” launch of the online service isn’t until next year, but if it remains based on a cumbersome phone app like this, I do not have high hopes for the Switch’s online future, despite all its other clear strengths.